


Year And A Day

by Cluegirl



Series: Bequeathments 'verse [3]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Asgardian magic screwing things up, BDSM, Consequences of war, Coping with trauma and loss, Established Relationship, Everyone Is Poly Because Avengers, Fix It Fic, M/M, References to slavery and rape, Steve is a Good Top
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-10-07
Updated: 2014-10-07
Packaged: 2018-02-20 07:10:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2419679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cluegirl/pseuds/Cluegirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On the anniversary of Loki's arrival on Earth, Cap and Clint go on a pilgrimage to lay some ghosts to rest.  One ghost, however, is more stubborn and more corporeal, than either of them anticipated.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Year And A Day

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to Clue's WIP dump! Due to Mercury's retrograde shenanigans, and Murphy's Law of Digital Media, I have decided to archive many of my WIPs onto the Net, so they don't disappear entirely. These will be updated as I get along on them, but they won't be as prompt as my readers have come to expect. This is just to get the finished parts safely archived, though everything I'm putting up here IS going to be finished. If you'd like to spare yourself the anxiety of a long wait, please consider using the subscription button.

The door is thick, well balanced and well oiled. Its catch makes almost no noise when it yields to a gentle turn and push. Not even the weather stripping brushes the carpet on the backswing as it closes. 

This is a problem. 

This is a problem because the doors in Stark Tower all whoosh when they open, (because no matter how he fronts, Stark will always be a closet Trekkie.) And because the doors at SHIELD installations are left deliberately clunky and unbalanced, (because no matter how they front, the agents are not ever as Over Their Shit as they pretend to be.) And because even in a podunk motel in the middle of a fucking desert, Cap won't sleep with an air conditioner running because he doesn't like the noise. And because soldiers like him can sleep through anything but the smell of coffee, a sentry's shout, or the sound of someone sneaking. And because Clint has a hard time not sneaking on the very best of days, which this is absolutely not, thank you very much. 

And _that's_ a problem because Clint, on top of every goddamned thing else, almost gets a mouthful of Vibranium when his lover goes from zero to Captain America in less than half a second.

Clint sees the flash of light eyes in the dark as the sheets whip aside, hears the metal ring free of whatever surface it had been sitting on, and he drops to the floor at once. "Coulson!" he yelps the safeword, huddling and folding his arms into the shelter of his body. "Coulson, Steve! It's me!" The silence that greets him is only seconds long, but Clint's heart trip-hammers through each one until he hears Cap let out his breath and set the shield aside.

"Clint." He's out of the bed and kneeling at Clint's side a moment later. His big, warm hands are smoothing the ridges of Clint's terror-bound shoulders as Steve settles behind him, almost around him on the shitty motel carpeting. "I'm so sorry. You startled me." Steve's arms go still, his chest pressed against the whole of Clint's side so neither of them can pretend he isn't shaking. "What's wrong?"

He can hear it in Cap's voice; the doubt he's been struggling against since he first came up with this stupid, moronic, dumb fucking plan of his -- going back _there_ on the anniversary of _that_. What kind of an idiot would think that was a good idea? Clint can hear how close Steve is to asking, yet again, if Clint is _sure_ about this, and he realizes between one heartbeat and the next that he cannot take it even one more time. Not from Steve. Not from his Captain. He'll break if he has to face that question tonight; he'll break, and he'll run, and if he does that the goddamned ghosts will never stop chasing him again. Clint turns in Steve's arms, curls himself into the massive bulwark of naked shoulder, and lets out all his breath at once. 

"Can't sleep," he murmurs, his lips tickling salt from Steve's bed-warm skin. "I can't... I keep thinking, and I." He swallows, leans just a little harder. "I need you to put me under, Steve. Please." 

He can feel the stillness, more shocking than a flinch or gasp, can feel how Steve goes instantly _there_ when Clint says the words, as if he's got the cowl on and shield in hand, and his enemy has just stepped out in challenge. Cap, who is goofy, and sappy and loves musicals and dumplings is nowhere in sight now; it's the Captain who's quelling Clint's shivers against his chest, it's _Steve_ now, and damn him for a shitty friend, but Clint feels safer at once. "I need it," he whispers again, and lets himself cling.

Steve looks up, around. Clint doesn't have to see it, he can feel the neck muscles twist and flex against his forehead as he scans the room, and when he speaks, the thoughtful frown is audible. "Not enough room for-"

"I know." The whip will stay in the car, with the other, more legitimate camping equipment. With the bed and dresser bolted to the floor like they are, there isn’t even enough room to swing a flogger without hitting the wall, a lamp, and probably the TV too. It can't be that way.

He feels Steve look down at him and has to resist the urge to huddle closer, as if he could hide from the doubts. "We'll get to Puente Antiguo tomorrow afternoon."

"And bruises would scare the nice townies." Clint swallows. "I know, but..." He untucks his face, risks revealing his eyes in a pleading stare. "Steve, I _need_ it. My head's too loud, and I'll be useless tomorrow. I won't be able to do it if I can't sleep tonight. I'll break, I'll fucking lose it, and I can't-"

That big, warm hand curls around the base of his skull then, grips firm and stills his babble with a single shake. "You won't, Clint. I've got you." 

Just that touch pressing into his skin, just those words murmured into his ear are enough to still the tremors Clint hasn't been able to quell on his own. Christ, it's only been a few months since he handed the Captain his jesses, and he's all but trained to the glove already. When he thinks about it in his saner moments, (when there's no welcome hand clamped at his spine, for instance,) that terrifies him. Tonight, it feels like his only hope.

Steve shifts beneath him, pulls Clint up against him cross-body like a toddler, still cradling his head in the one hand while the other secures his thighs against Steve's hip. Then he stands without apparent effort. There was a time when Clint had cursed that easy strength which hoists him now, back when Cap had first busted him for a pain slut in the wake of one of Clint's more spectacularly idiotic stunts. But Clint hadn't really been right in his head at the time, so now he tends to forgive himself the oversight of having cursed at his own salvation. Now he knows better -- if he wants to be caught when he's falling, he needs the catching arms to be strong ones.

And there aren't many stronger than Captain America, are there?

The bed grunts as Steve clambers onto it. Clint forces himself not to cling when he's set carefully down against the wall. There's enough light creeping through the blackout curtains for Clint to see the gold of Steve's hair gleaming, the creamy flush of his skin, the light of his eyes, blue greyed out in the gloom and most definitely _not_ glowing even a little bit, thank God. Steve sits back on his heels to consider, aware but onconcerned with either his nakedness, or Clint's awed, twitchy regard. Clint can feel his t shirt sticking along his spine -- nervous sweat rather than desert heat. He wants to squirm it dry against the wall, but he isn't going to move from where he's been placed. Not till his Captain gives him permission.

"No blindfold," Steve decides, and takes Clint's foot into his lap to pull the shoe off. "You can close your eyes if you need to."

He nods, tries not to shiver as Steve's thumb slides between his sock and the arch of his foot, peeling the cotton knit away. "Yes sir." His voice is steady. That is a fucking triumph.

"No gag." The other shoe comes off, thuds softly to the floor, and Clint can see the brief flash of a grin that is nothing like what the cameras ever see. "I want your mouth available."

"Yes. Yes, sir." Okay, so he cracks a little on that one. Anybody who's seen Steve's American Beauty standing at attention would have, too. The grin gets a little dirtier, grows horns, lights a cigarette as Steve slides his fingers under Clint's other sock.

"And no ropes, either," he finishes, eyes sharp on Clint's face. The sock peels away while Clint's choking that one down. The grey bag is right by the door. He carried it up from the car earlier, stepped over it coming in. There's something like 800 feet of line and cable in that bag; nylon, hemp, and even silk, and that's not counting any of the leathers he packed into it himself, and why the hell would they not- 

Steve presses a thumb hard into the arch of his foot, sending a jolt of pain right through Clint's building fit. A warning. A promise. Clint forces himself to take a breath, to hold it, and to let it go. "Yes sir," he manages, less steady this time.

The thumb strokes his arch gently now, just firm enough not to tickle. "We're running from Yellow tonight, Clint," Cap says, making a gift of the explanation they both know he doesn't owe. "You're too keyed up to start from Green. Not when you walked in here with your safeword already on your lips." Clint tries, oh dear God, but he tries to keep his face still, but something mutinous must slip through, because Steve's on it in a flash, sharp as a drill sergeant's bark, quiet as a deadly threat. 

"You have something to say?"

He has to swallow before the words come out smooth. "I'm good, sir," he says. 

He does not say, _'I can take it, God damn you! I'm not fucking fragile!'_ Because he wouldn't be here tonight if he wasn't cracking up just a little bit, and they both know it. His Captain would forgive him for the lie, he knows, but that would only make it worse in the end. He licks his lips, answers the patient waiting stare with a boosted chin. "I'm solid."

Steve's hand smoothes up his leg, the firm weight pressing out building jitters as Steve looms up close, puts his lips next to Clint's ear and murmurs, "Yes you are. For now." 

Then, in a sudden lurch, the hand on Clint's knee goes from comforting to what the FUCK! He manages not to yelp, but can't help kicking out, clawing for purchase as Steve yanks him flat onto his back, whips his shirt up over his head with one hand, and hauls his sweatpants and shorts just far enough down to hopelessly entangle his feet. It's not like rope -- rope is knots, precise, measured, exacting, and structured enough for him to outwit in three minutes or less, -- this is a chaotic welter of cloth and panic and Steve flipping him over onto his face, shoving him down when he gets his arms half under to push, and the sheets fucking smell like Steve and cheap soap, and his cock is trapped under his leg and five thousand pounds of super soldier that climbs onto his back and fucking _sprawls_ there, and he can't breathe, can't breathe at all, can't fit his arms under his chest, can't get his hands out of sight, can't can't can't-

"Shhhh…" Steve whispers into his ear. "Easy, Clint. You're okay. Just breathe."

"Can't."

"You can. Just raise your head." He feels Steve's hand brush the hair at his nape, and flinches. But there follows no grab, no cruel yank; it's a reminder, not a command. So he obeys it, and sobs in relief at the sweet, cool air that fills his lungs. 

His fingers are knotted bloodless in the sheets, wrists clenched in tight, forearms straining for cover, but in gratitude beyond words, Clint lets Steve tease them loose, unfurl them, and stretch them to the wall. He shivers when Steve's hands curl around his wrists, but all they do is stroke gently down to the elbow and back. "Still here," he says in Clint's ear, knowing he can't look away, "They're still here, nobody's taken them. They're still fine, still strong. And so are you." Then he drops a kiss into the curve of Clint's shoulder, where the muscle sweeps from neck into back -- it's a place he likes to mark with his teeth when he makes Clint fall apart for him, and that too is a reminder. _Not Loki's now, not Phil's. Just Steve's._

The sound that escapes Clint is ragged and might be laughter.

The next stroke draws Steve's perfect fucking hands up past Clint's elbows, along his biceps, deltoids, then curling briefly under his armpits. They don't stay long enough to tickle before sweeping underneath to graze his nipples on both sides, then they stroke firm and possessive along Clint's ribs to finally settle at his hips. Only his knees, spread around Clint's thighs, hold up any of Steve's weight now; the rest lies along Clint's spine from ass to shoulders, chin tucking over his head like a turtle's shell. The pressure is unrelieved and massive, but not threatening. Not anymore. 

"Hold them there," Steve says, meaning his hands. His whole, intact, present-and-accounted-for hands, spread against the wall over his head, "where you can see them." 

He nods, feeling his breath lengthening to match Steve's; long, even pulls in, slow, easy sighs out. Steve rocks them both just a little bit with each breath, not fully hard just yet, but Clint can feel that it won't be long. He can feel his heartbeat, Steve's heartbeat against his shoulder, like leaning on a door while someone knocks gently at the other side. The intimacy is staggering, the scent of Steve's skin mingling with his own, Steve's body shielding him, covering him while his heart keeps up that easy, steady, forever pace. Clint feels that his own must be following the example. He nods again, whispers, "Green, sir."

He feels the smile against his ear, the huff of laugh. Then Steve's weight rolls back, centering almost unbearably across Clint's ass as Steve rears up from laying to sitting, that firming cock a momentary crush of promise in the crack of his ass before he climbs off altogether. Clint is as breathless with the loss as he'd been with the panic. "Hold the wall," Steve reminds him, and picks Clint up by the hips to set him onto his knees, ass in the air, face pressed low between his arms, and oh fuck yes please. "Or the mattress. Don't let go."

Don't let go. He isn't talking about Clint's grip. His mouth goes dry, a heady mix of lust, dread, and hunger choking his throat. _Oh, this is going to suck!_ It's a long moment before he can reply. Steve waits for it though; his Captain is terrifyingly patient when it suits him to be.

"I won't let go, sir," he manages at last.

Steve pushes, widens Clint's stance before reaching through to take his cock in a grip forbiddingly tight and as still as iron, and it's a damned good thing Clint hasn't been ordered silent. Because then there's the huff of breath across his hole, hot and damp and full of threat, and the hungry whine is clawing out of Clint's throat before he even realizes it's there. And then, oh fuck then there's the _tongue,_ and it's so much hotter, and it's so goddamned strong, and it's licking him open, pressing its way in past the clenching fear, melting the tight-locked anxiety, digging at the lurking stress until it surrenders. Clint keens and claws the wall, but thrusting wins him nothing -- Steve's tongue evades his every greedy push, and the iron hand moves right along with his cock when he tries to shove into it; all pressure and absolutely no friction. When he peers down between his legs, Clint can see the shine of his precome glazing Steve's knuckles. It's the filthiest, most gorgeous thing he's ever seen, and his dick throbs against those fingers but it's not enough, and it makes him want to fucking _scream_.

He doesn't scream. Barely.

Soon, though, even the frustration has to crack. Clint stops rocking, stops rutting, forgets to thrust and twitch and buck, and just lets himself hang, poised and thrumming in Steve's hands. He feels the hum of approval pressed tight against his hungry skin, vibrations rocketing up his spine, and if the hand on his cock had slipped even a little bit in that moment, he have disgraced himself. But no, his Captain's too careful for that kind of mistake. The grip doesn't move. Until suddenly, in a rush of blood that's very nearly too much, it's altogether gone.

"Easy," Steve says, quelling Clint's convulsive shudder with one broad hand on his back. "Easy now. Don't let go..." And Clint would be laughing, crying at the order, only Steve's picking him up again, levering him over onto his back so his arms cross at the wrist and the sweaty sheet-creases pressed into his face and chest sting in the air. He can feel his cock bouncing off his belly, throbbing with his heartbeat, damp and drooling-hungry as Steve gathers his legs up high and tight against his chest. Clint's cock folds into the wetness it's left on his belly, then Steve's arms grip tight around Clint's back and he settles his weight with a groan that almost unravels them both.

Clint hears himself whimpering, his whole world wound up tight around Steve's cock, pressing like a bar of iron along the soaked, sensitive flesh from Clint's asshole to his balls, so close, so hard he can feel the blood rushing through it, and he doesn't fucking _care_ that he can't move, can't struggle, can barely fucking _breathe_ , because when Steve's arms tighten to pull his knees in closer, the pressure increase makes him groan right in Clint's ear. Steve's going to come. Steve's going to come all over him, and Clint suddenly wants that even more than he wants air. 

"Hands," Steve pants out, hips rocking forward like he can't quite help it. "On my shoulders."

"Yes sir," Clint hears the words wheeze out of him.

Steve rocks again, frets that cock against his taint and barks, "Clint!" in that voice that Clint could hear even if he was dead. He startles up just enough to get his eyes open, to see Steve's face looming over him, flushed and dark, hair hanging over his sweat-shining brow. "Put your hands onto my shoulders," Steve says through his teeth. "Now."

And then Clint lets go of the wall. He lets go of the wall, clutches for Steve with bloodless hands, and sobs as his orgasm looms up, hard and fast inside him.

"Hold," Steve commands, rocking his hips back, dragging his cockhead like an anvil over Clint's balls before driving down again, fucking him from the outside. Clint groans, so far beyond words he can only thrash his head against the sheets in answer. Holding. Dear God, holding somehow. He makes an urgent noise, digs his nails deep into heated flesh as Steve thrusts again. 

"On my mark," his Captain says, breathless, hard, and he's close. So. Fucking. Close. Feels like he's coming already. "Three." A rifle shot of powerful hips, driving his own cock into the pit of his belly. "Two." Another, balls slapping low against his rump, prick jamming up between his own balls. "One." Cockhead skimming his hole as it rams past. He's going to die. This is going to kill him.

"Now!"

And in the white, breathless roar of it, he can feel Steve's cock pulsing against him, bleeding out like a wounded thing between them, his own release in throbbing counterpoint just above it. Like Steve is breathing, groaning, coming for them both, and all Clint has to do is let go. 

So that's what he does.

~*~

They're crowded into the shower together by the time Clint starts to come out of it. One moment he's curling into Steve's mass against his back, soaking up the feeling of those big hands he loves all slick with soap and sliding over his chest and belly, and the next he's snickering at how the showerhead is pressing against Steve's cheek as if it's peeking over his shoulder to get only Clint wet.

Steve smiles at his giggle. "Something funny?"

"You're too tall," he says, blinking the spray from his eyes. "How do you even wash your hair?"

"On my knees," Steve deadpans, and his smile is positively fucking _loaded_. 

Clint chokes a laugh at that, even knowing he's supposed to, because it's _Steve_ , and he's making a _sex joke_ , and Stark would fucking infarct if he ever knew. Then again, Stark's chest reactor would probably explode if he ever guessed how amazing Steve's cocksucking skills are when he's _not_ joking, too. He turns in Steve's arms, rests his cheek against the swell of one pectoral muscle, and murmurs, "I could wash it for you."

Steve's hand comes up to cradle his head, cupping water and sound away from his ear, so it's through the echo chamber of his chest that Clint hears Steve's reply. "Tomorrow," he rumbles, and his thumb soothes Clint's eyebrow back, "Tonight's for you."

Clint hums, pleased and grateful, and entirely content to stay where he is, wet and warm, and sheltered from the ghosts of ice and loss, slavery and betrayal while Steve soaps up his hands again and washes his back with long, smooth strokes.

Afterward, he follows Steve to his bed, not asking if he should return to his own room. He lets Steve lay him down naked to the too-soft mattress and curl them both up a little to spoon where the middle sags like a hammock. He can still hear Steve's heart behind his ear, steady and constant and forever, and he is so, so grateful to hear Steve's voice curl out over the warm gloom.

"I've got you now," he says, arm looped over his waist, thighs pressing up to his, "sleep. No more dreams tonight."

"Yes sir," Clint sighs, and does.

~*~

The next morning he wakes silently, suddenly and all at once, as he always does. It takes him approximately two seconds to realize he's alone in the bed, the room dark and still and empty of any breath but his own. He can hear Steve's voice through the wall though, low and smooth, just enough heft to the cinderblock to render the conversation all gently exasperated tone and no clear words.

Clint thinks of getting up, setting one of the cheap plastic cups from the bathroom between the wall and his ear, but following a pause, he realizes that his Captain's alone in the next room. Just him and a phone, most likely. Which makes the rest of the equation fall into place, and settles the urge from wary self-protection down to the background noise of his history as a spy -- nothing he can't ignore. 

Clint settles for a quick trip to the head, then scrubbing the night before out of his mouth with the toothbrush Cap must've brought over from his room while Clint was asleep. He leaves the lights off when he heads back to the bed, and he leaves the plastic-wrapped cup where the maid put it. 

There's a set of his clothes in the desk chair, and Clint pulls them on in the darkness, not really needing to see what his Captain's chosen for him to wear today -- it's just going to be the two of them, the desert, and whatever ghosts they bring along. Nobody will care one way or the other about fashion.

He's lacing his boots up when the too-silent door glides open again, pouring a sodium vapor halo in around the silhouette of Captain America. Or rather, Steve Rogers in sweats and sneakers, who is juggling a plastic bag, two gallon jugs of water, a coffee tray, his phone, and the room keys as he tries to slip in before the door closes on him.

"What did Stark want?" Clint asks, heading over to rescue the coffee, and taking on the bag as well when the smell of eggs and chorizo catches his attention.

Steve laughs, low and rueful. "Attention."

Clint puts the food out, roots for flatware. "He comin' out too?" He manages not to growl the words, and he's proud of himself for that. Steve's cheek slants against the rime of light through the drapes, and his teeth glint in a smile that's just a little bit mean.

"That hearth-cat? Nah. He heard we were going on a desert hike today and suddenly remembered he had something that desperately needed rebuilding at home." Clint lets out the breath he's been holding, and nods, reaching for the coffee. One's light with cream. He leaves that for Steve, and pulls the black one with three sugars in it to himself.

"I wouldn't do that to you, Clint," Steve says after a silent moment of watching Clint load up a tortilla with eggs, beans, and sausage. "This, today. It's private. I wouldn't break that trust."

Clint shrugs as if it doesn't matter, and takes a bite of his breakfast. "You woul'n't. Ftarkf a nofey baftard ftho."

Steve shrugs, and begins assembling his own food. "Tony worries." Steve scowled at Clint's scoff. "We all do, Clint."

"I'm fine," he growls.

"Not that kind of worry, and you know it," Steve's voice hardens, reproach snapping like braided leather across Clint's surliness. He straightens, gives a sharp, soldierly nod, and fills his mouth with food so he won't be expected to speak.

Steve sighs, plainly unconvinced by Clint's display. But he only presses his knee against Clint's under the table, and picks up his own breakfast, murmuring, "Sooner or later you're gonna need to face the fact that we all actually do care about you, Clint. You're not really alone anymore." 

"Course not, Cap," Clint comes back, grin big and wide in the darkness. "I got you, don't I?"

Steve jostles his knee, but lets the diversion go. Neither of them pretending that conversation was really over at all. It will keep though. They have bigger phantoms to fight today.

**Author's Note:**

> 1) When I began this series, I was unaware of Clint's deafness. Now that I am aware of it in book canon, it's rather too late to retrofit this series to it, and since the movies are silent on the topic as of yet, I am treating it as hearing _loss_ , rather than full deafness. This is not intended as erasure, I promise, just as continuity maintenance.  
> 2) To that end, I also realize that the Mojave desert (site of the P.E.G.A.S.U.S. installation) is nowhere near New Mexico, and Puente Antiguo (site of Thor's fall to Earth.) There's no sane way to handwave that, so we're going to pretend that PEGASUS is in the Sonora desert instead. It just makes things simpler.  
> 3) Please feel free to ask questions, here or on [my tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/theactualcluegirl). There's nothing more inspiring to my creativity than talking shop with someone who digs where a story is heading.


End file.
